Computer

My Late 2012 Mac Book Pro Retina laptop is all but dead, it has many dead pixels and because of the poor cooling and is NOT a joy to use anymore. It does not “JUST WORK” and personally, I do not think “thinner” laptops can handle Australian summers as its hardware cooling it inadequate above 40c air temperatures.

My laptop processor would spend more time thermal throttling (at 104c) in Web Browsers and text editors that at normal speeds. Opening up productivity apps like Photoshop or Premiere Pro would send the laptop into meltdown.

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Frequent high temps were common.

Attempted Fixes

Warning Disclaimer: My laptop is out of warranty and I know my way around the inside of a computer hardware without zapping it. Do not attempt to open your laptop unless you know what you are doing, have backed up your data and are prepared to brick your computer.

I removed dust from inside the laptop.

I tried to only use the laptop refrigerative air conditioning

I replaced the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU (3 times)

I reinstalled OSX Mojave and reset the SMC and PRAM multiple times.

I ran the fans at 100% (see post here), The fans were operating at full capacity and were not broken.

The stock thermal paste was crusty after 5 years. The plastic CPU/GPU cover was visibly cooked.

I ordered some new Thermal grizzly thermal paste, I had some older silicone paste on hand just in case.

After many reapplications of the Thermal Grizzly, the older silicone paste seemed to work the better???

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After a few months, all of the fixes above did not seem to work. OSX Mojave would spin up the CPU and GPU into a frenzy overloading the single heat pipe within minutes.

Time to try some more drastic cooling modifications?

I tried improving the efficiency of the single (copper) heat pipe that is shared between an Intel i7 2.6 GHz and an Nvidia Video Card by removing the black paint by stripping the paint with acetone.

I manually removed paint from in between the heat sink fins with a LED to reveal the metal.

I reinstalled the heat pipe with high hopes? That looks nice 🙂

I removed the old thermal paste and added new paste. First I tried Thermal Grizzly Cryonaut. I re-applied the paste three separate times as each application was not that much better than the old crusty stock paste from Apple. Did I have a bad batch of Thermal Grizzly?, It seemed thick and not very viscous. I ended up using an old tube of silicone paste (the white stuff) as my Arctic Silver was too old to try and I did not want to order more.

With the silicone paste applied and the paint removed temperatures were about 15c lower at max, I still had frequent thermal throttling but at least I had a reserve buffer.

This was all before the Aussie Heatwaves and high temperatures soon returned.

Is there still room for improvement?

How heat pipes work

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Heat pipes have an evaporating (hot part) and condensing zone (cool part) on the heat pipe. I noticed Apple’s “stock” condensing fins were small, would improving this zone help?. Time to improve the condensers zones by adding larger copper heat sinks to the bare side of the heat pipe.

I purchased a few copper Xeon/Sun server sized heat sinks and thermal epoxied them to the condensing end of the heat pipe. Yes, they would protrude out the bottom of the case but #Meh. I can fix that by extending the base of the laptop down and making it thicker (old school style).

The server heat sinks arrived

I cut the heat sinks in half.

I packed the fins with paper before cutting to ensure the cut did not damage the fins.

After cutting, I wiped the copper heat sinks with vinegar to restore the surface to a nice copper shine.

I tested the heat sink idea with silicone paste first

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Temps were 25c lower, Now it’s time to use Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy

I applied the Thermal Epoxy to the heat pipe (I temporary had foil strips above the fans so I did not block them while the epoxy dried.

I then stuck the heat sink’s to the heat pipe (with Arctic Silver Thermal Epoxy).

I toyed with a clear case but decided against it for static electricity and stability reasons.

I purchased a second Mac Book base for so I could cut holes for the heat sinks to protrude and use the original base to hide the modification.

I made a 30 mm base wall to so I could use it as a wall between the laptop base and the new 30mm lower base.

I added some 5-volt and 12 -volt fans inside the new extended 30mm base.

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Finished Product

A normal looking Mac Book except for the 30mm lower base and internal 5V or 12V fans.

External power plugs on the left side, I will add lights at a later stage.

Are the temps lower?

Videos

Video: Mac Book Pro cooling mod, I can now watch 1080p videos without maxing the CPU

Video: Mac Book Pro cooling mod with external powered 5v or 12v fans

Conclusion

50c lower temps are nicer at idle but in Premiere Pro (exporting video) the laptop was still thermal throttling like mad and temps were terrible (100+). Lets not get started when I start some development VM’s

Conclusion 2 weeks later

This is still not a joy to use. I don’t think I have the right to expect a 5-year-old laptop to keep up running a CPU/GPU intensive OS and applications.

Time to buy a new computer, Apple still makes thin and over heating laptops by the looks of it?

Maybe I need to buy a fridge to stick a computer in a fridge to use these days?

YouTube users indicate Apple has a problem with heat.

What computer do I get next?

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Not an Apple made one. I will be moving back to Windows for local development and Linux on servers

Dell Alienware has many heat pipes.

Acer Predator 500

I read a few reviews (e.g this one from Ultra book reviews) and Acer have good cooling.

Lynis is an open source security auditing tool. Used by system administrators, security professionals, and auditors, to evaluate the security defences of their Linux and Unix-based systems. It runs on the host itself, so it performs more extensive security scans than vulnerability scanners. https://cisofy.com/lynis and https://github.com/CISOfy/lynis.

I can now install and update other packages with apt and not have the following error

E: Malformed entry 1 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cisofy-lynis.list (Component)
E: The list of sources could not be read.
E: Malformed entry 1 in list file /etc/apt/sources.list.d/cisofy-lynis.list (Component)
E: The list of sources could not be read.

I will remove the git clone and re-run the apt version later and put in more steps to get to a High 90’s Lynis score.

It is easy to deploy servers to the cloud within a few minutes, you can have a cloud-based server that you (or others can use). ubuntu has a great guide on setting up basic security issues but what do you need to do.

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If you do not secure your server expect it to be hacked into. Below are tips on securing your cloud server.

Always use update software, malicious users can detect what software you use with sites like shodan.io (or use port scan tools) and then look for weaknesses from well-published lists (e.g WordPress, Windows, MySQL, node, LifeRay, Oracle etc). People can even use Google to search for login pages or sites with passwords in HTML (yes that simple). Once a system is identified by a malicious user they can send automated bots to break into your site (trying millions of passwords a day) or use tools to bypass existing defences (Security researcher Troy Hunt found out it’s child’s play).

[DEFAULT]
# "ignoreip" can be an IP address, a CIDR mask or a DNS host. Fail2ban will not
# ban a host which matches an address in this list. Several addresses can be
# defined using space separator.
ignoreip = 127.0.0.1 192.168.1.0/24 8.8.8.8

Restart the service

sudo service fail2ban restart
sudo service fail2ban status

Intrusion detection (logging) systems

Tripwire will not block or prevent intrusions but it will log and give you a heads up with risks and things of concern

tip: Download manual antivirus update definitions. If you only have a 512MB server your update may fail and you may want to stop fresh claim/php/nginx and mysql before you update to ensure the antivirus definitions update. You can move this to a con job and set this to update at set times over daemon to ensure updates happen.

Amazon Web Services have a great free tier where you can develop with very little cost. The free tier Linux server is a t2.micro server (1 CPU, low to moderate IO, 1GB memory with 750 hours or CPU usage). The free tier limits are listed here. Before you upgrade can you optimize or cache content to limit usage?

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When you are ready to upgrade resources you can use this cost calculator to set your region (I am in the Sydney region) and estimate your new costs.

I have a NGINX Server with a NodeJS back powering an API that talks to a local MySQL database and Remote MongoDB Cluster ( on AWS via http://www.mongodb.com/cloud/). The MongoDB cluster was going to cost about $120 a month (too high for testing an app before launch). The Free tier AWS instance is running below the 20% usage limit so this costs nothing (on the AWS free tier).

You can monitor your instance usage and credit in the Amazon Management Console, keep an eye on the CPU usage and CPU Credit and CPU Credit Balance. If the CPU usage grows and balance drops you may need to upgrade your server to prevent usage charges.

I prefer the optional htop command in Ubuntu to keep track of memory and processes usage.

Basic information from AWS t1.micro (idle)

Older htop screenshot of a dual CPU VM being stressed.

Future Requirements

I plan on moving a non-cluster MongoDB database onto an upgraded AWS free tier instance and develop and test there and when and if a scalable cluster is needed I can then move the database back to http://www.mongodb.com/cloud/.

First I will need to upgrade my Free tier EC2 instance to be able to install MongoDB 3.2 and power more local processing. Upgrading will also give me more processing power to run local scripts (instead of hosting them in Singapore on Digital Ocean).

How to upgrade a t2.micro to t2.medium

The t2.medium server has 2 CPU’s, 4 GB of memory and Low to Moderate IO.

Backup your server in AWS (and manual backup).

Shutdown the server with the command sudo shutdown now

Login to your AWS Management Console and click Instances (note: Your instance will say it is running but it has shut down (test with SSH and connection will be refused)).

Click Actions, Image then Create Image

Name the image (select any volumes you have created) and click Create Image.

You can follow the progress o the snapshot creation under the Snapshots menu.

When the volumes have been snapshoted you can stop the instance.

Now you can change the instance type by right clicking on the stopped instance and selecting Instance Settings then Change Instance Type

This guide is being edited over time (as I have been asked by a few people what to look for when buying a new computer, I will keep updating this guide over time with new information). It can be hard knowing what a person needs from a computer now and into the future (Windows or Mac) so the decision is ultimately yours. This guide will hopefully inform you what internal components (specs (specifications)) to care about and what specs to ignore when buying a new computer.

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Choosing an Intel or Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor?

In years gone by Intel were the faster and most expensive processors and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) was the cheaper and slower processors but recently Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has been matching Intel processors and has been driving the innovation. Generally, an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) based system will be cheaper and will have the most profit for a retailer. The faster a system the more expensive it will be and the less room for discounts IMHO.

Salespeople.

Most sales people personally prefer a certain brand processor, video card or computer brand but most salespeople will recommend the system with the highest profit margin (and commission for them) so beware of advice from sales people. FYI I am not paid to say anything here.

Cores v MHz.

Computer processors used to have only one processor core and used to run at a certain megahertz all the time (making comparisons of processors and systems easy) but processors these days have multiple cores each core can run at potentially different megahertz (and run at a lower speed by default). Cores can change speed thousands of times a second. Some software programs prefer one processor core or multiple cores (it is very rare that software will use all cores efficiently) so comparisons are hard. Generally, newer generation processors are faster than older processors that run at the same speed, but having a few cores helps the operating system manage background tasks but don’t expect an 8 core system to run software 8x faster.

Cooling, Noise and Thermal Throttling.

A computer processor has embedded temperature sensors that tell it when one core reaches a set temperature the processor will start to slow down the processor to protect itself (by slowing down one or multiple cores). A computer’s internal cooling architecture and ultimately airflow will determine how fast a computer is in the long term. A heavy laptop or computer may, in fact, weigh more because it has better internal cooling (or not) so beware buying light computers. Apple computers are made of light aluminium metal and (some say because they are slower) are lighter, quieter and not as hot (I Agree).

Remember even a fast machines can run slow on hot days or if the cooling is no good.

Software

Windows generally, has more software available but Apples can run Windows software via emulation software called Parallels (cost involved).

A free Ubuntu (Linux) is also available. Read my guide on Ubuntu here.

Apple also has a free operating system and software (with their computers). View more information on macOS here.

Longevity

The golden rule is to spend more than $2k on a computer and get as much memory (RAM) and storage (HDD) as possible. But spending $2,000 on a computer that will last 2 years is silly when a $3,500 computer that lasts 9 years.

Emma Castle from http://shegoes.com.au/ said, “That computer (13″ Apple Mac Book) was exceptional for a very long time!” when her 2009 computer died.

Should I get an Intel i3, i5, i7 or i9 or xx processor?

An Intel i3 processor has 2 cores (but generally run faster per core than an Inteli5 or Intel i7). An Intel i5 has 4 cores and an Inteli7 also has 4 cores and 4 virtual cores (8 cores) and the 4 real cores handle the work of the 4 virtual cores. Gamers and programmers usually get Intel i7′s over an Intel i5 or an Intel i3. Generally, the higher the number the faster the processor. Intel has just released i9’s but they are not available yet.

If you are looking at an Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) processor aim for a Ryzen processor (as they are brand new and quite fast).

Nvidia or AMD Graphics Card?

A graphics card is like a mini computer in a computer that is responsible for games and many graphical tasks in software and the operating system. Mac OS and Windows 10 need a fairly good video cards.

A video card has its own processor (GPU), memory and has its own cooling. I won’t bore you with details about graphics cards here but video cards are more complex than the rest of the computer. Generally, gamers need expensive video cards where everyone else does not.

A good video card has its own dedicated memory (not shared with the main system memory) avoid on CPU video cards like the Intel Integrated graphics chip as it will heat up the processor.

Price (goldylocks)

Generally don’t get the cheapest or the most expensive computer for obvious reasons.

Power usage.

Generally, The higher the power usage (power brick charger) the faster the computer (or the older a system is). The more electricity a computer uses the more its insides need cooling and the noisier it may be too.

Time to buy.

Tax time is a great time to buy a new computer and many Windows computers will be on special (Apple do not discount much).

Apple tends to update their computers every 500 days, you can use the Mac buyers guide site to determine the best time to buy Apple computer or device. Apple tends to discount when surplus computers are available before new models are launched. All retailers are keen to clear out older stock in June in Australia before the end of the tax year.

Generally, you are looking for an Apple or Windows computer (I cannot decide that for you).

Windows Computers.

Windows computers are cheaper (but in my opinion and experience last far less than Apple computers).

Most people get a Windows computer. Windows computers do have great games available. FYI: I am biased towards Apple computers.

Apple.

Generally, people buy Apple computers if you are an app developer, creative, want a nice computer system or are sick of Windows crashes and viruses.

If you search for a brand laptop long enough you will have add banners follow you around the internet so don’t be in a hurry to buy a computer (let the discounts come to you). Don’t be afraid to ask vendors for discounts. All hardware has profit margins and discounts or freebie throw in’s are usually available.

Most brand name computer manufacturers have discounted models all year round. Just use google and browse the retailer’s website.

Durability.

A laptop needs to be durable and last a long time. My metal Apple Mac from mid-2012 still looks as good as the day I purchased it. Avoid plastic computers and computers that run hot (start a computer before buying it).

Configurability and upgradability.

Laptops are less configurable and upgradable over desktop computers. My advice is to buy at least 512GB of solid-state hard drive storage and 16GB of memory.

Memory generations and speeds.

Generally, more memory will add more speed to a computer. Memory comes in various speeds and newer memory generations (e.g DDR2, DDR3, DDR4) are faster overall but are technically slower at smaller tasks (as they add more latency to achieve higher speeds). Read more about memory speeds and timings here.

Try and aim for 16GB memory over 4GB, 8GB. Also the more memory you have the higher chance of system crashes and errors IMHO.

Storage types and sizes.

Olden day hard drives used spinning magnetic disks and have floating read heads, more modern hard drives have faster flash-based solid state drives that use electrical circuits. Solid state drives are about 10x faster than spinning magnetic drives but may not last as long due to limited lifespans. A mechanical and spinning hard drive is slower but larger in capacity and is more recoverable in the event of a crash and are cheaper. More on hard drive differences and reliability here. Backblaze publish a report of failure rates in large capacity magnetic drives each year, read here. Hybrid drives combine a small flash solid state drive with a larger spinning hard drive. This is a perfect balance.

Newer Intel-based systems may contain Optane based devices that may boost the performance of a computer. Optane is recent so any Optane compatible system is new.

Get a solid state if you can afford it but a spinning hard drive is still ok. If you are getting a solid state drive get at least 512GB in capacity.

Screen sizes and types.

Generally, I ignore the screen technology (LCD, TFT, IPS) and instead focus on the screens resolution (1920×1200 resolution minimum) and colour abilities (6-bit, 8-bit, 10-bit or 12-bit). A goood 8-bit TFT or LCD can beat a newer 12-Bit IPS. I’d look for a 1920×1200 resolution screen that is 10bit of higher. A 10-bit monitor can display more colours than a 6-bit monitor. Read more on bits here.

Recently 4K resolution screens have hit the market so if money is no object get a 4K monitor (if it is also 12-bits).

Look for a system that can handle external monitors (via HDMI, Display Port or Air Display (Apple)) to complement your primary monitor. Apple computers can wirelessly beam displays to Apple TV/TV’s or connect to other displays via dongles.

System Noise.

A fast system can potentially be a noisy system so do power up a system before you buy it. Generally, Apple computers will be silent (at the cost of speed, but will spin up noisy fans if needed).

Ask Yourself, What is the noise of a system at Idle and Full Load before buying a computer?

Battery Capacity.

A small battery is no good in a laptop, try and aim for a 15MA battery or higher. 10+ hours of running time is ideal.

Accessories

Almost all laptops and systems come with an SD-CARD slot, USB, Bluetooth, headphone and microphone jacks (except Apple who has moved to USB-C and accessory based dongles).

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